20 Conclusion and Philosophy of Life

Drostan Hall, who was conducting the Camerata Chicago in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony after Sir Charles Mackerras was conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in the same music. Sir Charles’ entire musical life was above all devoted to one cause, as his sister Joan tells us.

INTERVIEW 2-20: JOAN MACKERRAS

Joan Mackerras – the sister of Sir Charles Mackerras, whose life and career we have been remembering in this tribute that has been generously underwritten by the Buonacorsi Foundation.

I’m Lisa Flynn, I’ve been your host for “Sir Charles Mackerras, Master Conductor, A Profile,” which has come to you over the WFMT Radio Network and has been produced by Jon Tolansky, with Steve Robinson as the Executive Producer. And in the last interview that Jon Tolansky recorded with Sir Charles, his closing words were about The Cunning Little Vixen – the opera by the composer that he virtually single-handedly made world famous through his devoted life-time championship: Leos Janacek. It’s with his comments and this work that we conclude this program, as, in the final scene, the forest game-keeper, grieving at the loss of the fox he reared and loved, and feeling old, tired and unloved, is suddenly revived when a baby frog jumps onto his lap, just like its grandfather had done in the opera’s first scene – and he is deeply consoled by nature’s cycle of death leading to new life.

INTERVIEW 2-21: CHARLES MACKERRAS

MUSIC 15) VIXEN

By Jon Tolansky.

Permission for the Mackerras Legacy site to reproduce this script and interviews has been generously granted by Jon Tolansky and the WFMT Radio Network.